One of the most offensive things you can do to a Christian is tell them that you're a good person. Christians pride themselves on being vile criminals, and only through the sacrifice of Jesus can they ever
expect to be forgiven for their horrific sins (although those "horrific" sins tend to be the same petty stuff as everyone else). The idea that people can be good without Jesus is an affront to everything they
hold dear. For example, CFI (Center For Inquiry) recently put up a billboard in Grand Rapids, Michigan as part of a global campaign to raise awareness for secular beliefs. The billboard simply reads, "You don't
need God to hope, to care, to love, to live." But even with a unoffensive message like that, it was difficult to find a company willing to display it. Many billboard companies refuse to display signs like that,
either because the company is run by Christians who refuse such content, or they're too afraid of the backlash they'll receive from Christian citizens. As for the Grand Rapids billboard, it's generated plenty of
ire. Take a look at this interview. The lady says, "It's crazy. Everybody needs religion. Everybody needs a God. I don't
know why people put up a sign like this." Then, in the comments section below, you get rabble like, "A fool says that there is no God, a fool says that they don't need God. It's a darn right shame that there are
people who think that way." "No one is good. But the hope of Christians is that our darkness can be redeemed for good." Based on these comments, you can probably see why people put these billboards up.

In Christianity, there is something in the Evangelical movement called the Prosperity Gospel which basically says that rich people are rich because God thinks the deserve lots of money, and poor people are
poor because they haven't given enough money to the church. Take for example Creflo Dollar and Leroy Thompson, millionaire preachers who think people who don't tithe enough should be
shot in the head.

After Michelle Bachmann received a bunch of backlash from claiming God sent Hurricane Irene to punish us, she changed her tune. Now she's saying that it was all
just a joke. To quote, "What I was saying in a humorous vein is there are things happening
that politicians need to pay attention to." A humorous vein? Sorry, I'm not laughing! She followed by saying, "It isn't every day we have an earthquake in the United States." Actually, according to the
US Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center, we have already had 2,901 earthquakes this year, which averages out
to around 12 earthquakes a day. Last year we averaged about 23 earthquakes a day. This is what happens when you're completely ignorant to science.

We all know that Ray Comfort is a big fat liar, but now he's added scam artist to his repertoire. He claims to have an pro-life argument so convincing that it will make anyone change their mind in 30 seconds!
He's even created a documentary called 180 where you can learn the argument to use it on your friends! He demonstrates the argument in action in the
trailer where people appear to be convinced. Want to know the 30 second argument that will save the lives of billions of aborted babies? Well, you can't! It's not online. However, you can give them your
personal information and send them some money to learn their magical secret. This is the same kind of scam you see with Scientology; we have secrets to save the world, but we can't tell you unless you give us
time and money. People who have seen early releases of the film say the argument goes like this: Hitler murdered Jews. Abortion kills babies. Therefore, abortion is just like the Holocaust. And you don't want to
be a Nazi do you? I've crapped out better arguments than that.

Emily and I looked at a house over the weekend that we really love, and we're probably going to buy! But more importantly, I finally got through Ravenholm in Halflife 2.

With a death toll already at 27, hurrican Irene has been pretty awful. Rather than send out their sympathies, Tea Party members claim the storm is the
work of God who is displeased with the Obama administration. Michelle Bachmann even took it upon herself to speak
for God saying, "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?'"
Glenn Beck also claims
that the hurricane is "a blessing from God." These people are seriously insane.

The Institute of Medicine is just another scientific panel that has gone on record saying that the MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism.

How would you like it if your son or daughter came home from public school wearing a bracelet that included a coupon for free admission to an event being held by a Satanic cult? After a little investigation,
you found that the teacher put those bracelets on the children without even asking them if they wanted them. Furthermore, the Satanic cult was given permission by the school's administration to interrupt class
and give a talk to your children. I assume that you'd be pretty pissed off about that. Well, Team Impact, an Evangelical group that prides itself on
infiltrating public schools and preaching their particular religion to children without their parent's consent has done just that. Read the
full story over at The Friendly Atheist.

Here's a video about why it's important that copyrights expire and why mega companies don't want them to.

Pastor Mike, a man who thinks atheists are on par with terrorists and the KKK (two groups with a religious base), wants to create a
national registry of atheists, much like totalitarian dictators before him. He not only doesn't see why this would
be a problem, but think atheists would be happy to put themselves on his list of hatred.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has implemented a new policy in order to allow for religious freedom for the funerals of soldiers. People working for the VA can no longer talk about religion during the
funeral services unless that religion matches the soldier's. For example, if the soldier was Christian, the workers cannot tell the family, "Your son is in Paradise with Allah," or, if they soldier was Jewish,
they cannot say, "Your son is with Jesus now." This policy was implemented to ensure that the soldier and family receives proper respect since there have been complaints of workers at the VA saying things like,
"God bless you," and, "your son is in Heaven," to the family members of Jewish, Muslim, and atheist soldiers. While this new policy sounds like something we can all agree on, it's a huge problem for
Texas Republicans like Representative John
Culberson who support a lawsuit against the VA and is threatening to stop the salary of those involved. Why? Because they claim that the VA is trying to remove God from soldiers funerals, despite the VA
explicitly saying that VA workers can talk all they want about Jesus and God at Christian funerals. How close-minded and ignorant do you have to be to not see how utterly tasteless it is to tell the Jewish mother
of a Jewish soldier that her son is with Jesus?

The more religious your state is, the more likely you are to get a divorce. Praise Jesus!

134 Catholic clerics have been accused, and many convicted, of sexual assault on a child in Boston
alone. The sad part is that most of the punishments aren't prison, but instead getting kicked out of the clergy.

Ugh! Firefox 7 has followed Chrome by dropped the "http://" prefix on URLs in its address bar. This is another one of those "fixes" that makes things easier for the amateurs who don't know what they're doing,
but cripples people like me who understand the prefix. I make hyperlinks by copying the URL in the address bar all the time and manual hyperlinks need a protocol, so this "feature" is especially annoying because
I now have to manually manually type the http:// prefix every time you copy the URL. If you want to return FireFox to its previous behavior, open FireFox, navigate to about:config, search for
browser.urlbar.trimURLs, and set it to false. This will unhide the http:// prefix.

Another annoyance with most modern browsers is the inability to set a default value into a file type input box. I understand the security risk, would could easily create a web page that caused users to
inadvertently upload sensitive files, but the page I'm working on will only ever be used by me, and I hate having to manually choose the same file every time I reload the page. The security block isn't necessary
when a page is loaded locally since, if you can get a user to load a page locally, you've already breached security.

Woah! Game Stop is being evil! They opened all of their Deus Ex games and threw away the free Onlive coupons for PC
gamers because it competes with their own online gaming site. If you're planning on buying Deus Ex, do not get it from Game Stop!

This is a dry, but exhaustive rebuttle to the work of Lord Monckton, climate change denialist. In it, the author contacts the scientists whose work is cited by Monckton and proves that Monckton doesn't
understand the studies that he uses to argue against climate change. Nearly all of the scientists he cites disgree with what he says. He's ignorant to science, and a liar. Parts:
1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6.

Jessica Ahlquist gave a wonderful talk about what you can do to not be discriminated in your school by well-to-do religious people.

I saw a google car taking streetview photos yesterday! I wonder if my car will be online when they update?

That's the old passage to Ravenholm. We don't go there anymore.

Feeling: Frightened

2011/08/24

I started playing Half-Life 2 and last night I got to the Ravenholm section. Son of a bitch, that section is scary! They artists did an amazing job of making one of the most creepy environments I've ever seen.

A couple days ago I sent a strongly worded letter to the Canadian Blood Services web site about their egregious abuse of science on their
What's Your Type page which claims that your blood type magically affects your personality and even which diet will
affect you. Their cited sources include studies made by quack doctors that have been discredited by their peers. Well, I just received a reply from them where they say that the lies on their web site is meant "to
be a light-hearted way to involve potential new donors," and they downplay the magical thinking as, "only a minor part of the process." They claim that the new program has added "nearly 5,000 new donors to our
donor base last year alone, and has proved to be an effective avenue for introducing Canadians to donating blood." No doubt it has been. It's amazing what you can accomplish by lying to people. But here's the
problem, they tell people who visit their site that they should alter their diet based on their blood type. Type O, which accounts for about 40% of the world, is told that they are real meat eaters. Is a blood
bank really qualified to tell people to start eating a cholesterol and fat heavy diet? They sure don't think so because they have a footnote that says, "You should seek medical supervision for all matters
regarding your health." After reading their letter, I believed they were simply going to dismiss me, but then it ended with the following sentence, "We are working on some updates to the What's Your Type program
this year with more focus on science based facts while still keeping the program fun for potential blood donors in Canada." Hey! That sounds promising! Let's hope that they learn that scientific facts are
exciting without having to result to mysticism and magic.

If you can't even name the 10 commandments, you probably shouldn't be fighting to keep them in the court houses. But that doesn't make sense to
Republican Representative Lynn Westmoreland.

Sausage curl, chicken wing, it's all because of you!

Feeling: Happy

2011/08/22

I'm not sure if the WikiHow article on converting an atheist to Christianity is despicable or a
Poe. The how to guide is basically a long list of instructions for lying. Many of the arguments revolve around asking a difficult question regarding science
that the average layperson isn't familiar with in hopes that this will shake their reliance on science. However, these arguments usually end with, "be prepared for this not to work because this is in fact
already answered by science." So, I'm not sure if this article is setup to parody the liars that makeup the Christian apologist movement, or if this is actually where they learn how to lie.

David Silverman, head of American Atheists, gives an awesome talk to the Secular Student Alliance entitled, "A Fight We Can Win".

Poor Christine O'Donnell, she can't even answer a simple question like, "Do you support same-sex marriage," without leaving an interview. She even calls
the interviewer rude for asking her a question about the stance she alludes to in her book. What an embarrassment!

Canadian Blood Services tries to be more hip by introducing astrology-esque fortunes into the various blood types. Not
only is that fuzzy-feeling bullshit, but even their attempts at factual history are off.

Want to ask your Republican Representative a question? Better bring your wallet. Several Republican Representatives have taken to
charging admission if you want to talk to them.

Need more videogames!

Feeling: Happy

2011/08/18

Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry is both stupid and a liar. I say he's stupid because he still believes that global climate change isn't caused by humans. I say he's a liar because he says that almost daily
scientists are speaking against climate change. No. Nearly all scientists who study the climate agree that
humans are responsible for climate change. If you want to see why our carbon footprint affects global warming, read
this article which combats popular anti climate change claims.

A girl was sexually assaulted at a school in Greene County, Missouri, but the school didn't believe her. In fact, they expelled her for making the whole thing up. When she returned the next year, she was again
raped by the same boy. This time, a rape kit showed the boy's DNA inside of the girl. Even after the DNA matched the boy, the school
still suspended the girl for "disrespectful conduct" and "public display of affection." I really hope we're missing
something from this story, because it sounds too awful to be true.

Michelle Bachmann just thinks all gays are horrible broken people who should be pitied and never given the chance at happiness until they conform to her ideals of morality... but
she doesn't judge.

When a huge corporation sues a single blogger for saying their product is bullshit, you -know- their product is bullshit. Bioiron is a pharmaceutical company that makes Oscillococcinum and they're suing
Samuele Riva, an Italian blogger, for pointing out that homeopathy doesn't work, and Oscillococcinum doesn't actually exist.

To contrast yesterday's video of smart people begin really stupid about religion, here are some smart people being smart about religion.

Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, until you find your dream

Feeling: Happy

2011/08/17

The Sound of Music showing was wonderful. Allowing the audience to really get into the movie made it much more exciting and enjoyable, though I wouldn't want to do that with any movie I hadn't yet seen.

Science wins in Texas! The new textbooks not only won't have any Creationist bullshit, but they will rightly affirm evolution!

If you want to watch some serious mental gymnastics, watch this video of 20 Christian academics speaking about God. It's amazing how they can suspend
rational thought and say some patently absurd things, despite their level of education.

Remember that atheist billboard in Ohio that was put up on land owned by a church, and then the church decided that they couldn't allow a billboard with a message that conflicted with their ideals? Well, by
doing that, they entered themselves into the realm of advertising, and that meant that they had to
start paying taxes!

I was at the bookstore the other night, and my cashier was a very effeminate man, most likely gay. There was a little boy and his father in line behind me. As I was walking out, the little boy asked his
father, in a voice that carried across the store, "Is that a momestual?" It was clear that he was asking if the man was a homosexual. The father kept quiet, and the cashier said, "I'm not sure what that is,"
although it was clear from his tone that he knew exactly what the boy was asking.

The Albemarle County School Board in Virginia has decided to ban Sir Author Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study In Scarlet. Not because the book has two murders in it, but because the book
paints the Mormons in a bad light. No word yet if they plan on banning the bible for placing Christians
in a bad light.

Although, that's nowhere near as bad as the code of conduct at Columbia County Schools in Georgia which force all students to sign a document which says that they have respect for
"The Creator", which was backed up by Senior Assistant Attorney
General Kathryn L. Allen who said it doesn't, "disparage those who do not hold a belief in creation." How would she know?

Fox News is reporting that God has answered the prayers of Texas Governor Rick Perry. No, not the recent prayers he made to fix up the state that his
mismanagement has run into the ground, but the prayers he made -four months ago- for rain. Fox News and Rick Perry, you're both morons of the greatest caliber. Rick Perry didn't make it rain, God didn't make it
rain, rain is simply a random aspect of weather.

If you want to know the science behind how life began on Earth, take a look at
this article. It's quite lengthy, but it's relatively easy to follow.

Heading down to Ann Arbor tonight to see a Sound of Music sing along on the big screen!

You don't have to be a closeted homosexual to be a Republican... but it helps!

Feeling: Happy

2011/08/15

Another gay-bashing Republican turns out to be a closeted homosexual. Indiana Representative Phillip Hinkle tried hooking up with
a 20-year-old young man who was looking for a sugar daddy. Though he offered $10,000 in hush money, Phillip Hinkle's secret is out. He may have voted to ban gay marriage, but he certainly doesn't have a problem
with gay sex!

I beat Portal 2 over the weekend. I have nothing but good things to say about it. The winks to the old levels were
great, the new characters were hilarious, and the new mechanics really made the game exciting and fresh.

It doesn't always take a lawsuit for equality to be enforced. Blue Island, Illinois has vehicle stickers that every driver is expected to display on their vehicle, but these stickers commemorate the birthdays
of churches. In a sense, the city was making people put stickers of churches on their cars. So, activist Rob Sherman made a case to the mayor and explained how that was a violation of the first amendment. The
mayor agreed, and all subsequent stickers will not force motorists to advertise for churches. Well done Illinois! Progress, and
no need for a lawsuit.

Texas ranks at the bottom of the barrel in all sorts of metrics. Education, pollution, unwanted pregnancy, etc. And through all of this, their leader, Republican Governor Rick Perry, has tried to pray away all
of their problems. He has held numerous prayer rallies at the taxpayer's expense, and yet all of the problems remain. And now he's
running for president.

Canada's police officers take a rather blaze approach to assault and vandalism. Just so long as they don't upset the Muslims.

Picked up Portal 2 last night now that the price has dropped. It's been downloading all night and should be ready for me to play tonight. Also spent a lot of time in Minecraft last night building up my pyramid
and putting the roof on my first tower.

Finally got to pay my AT&T bill. Apparently, the log in that I was using wasn't the right type, so I had to create a second one. Even though they log in to the same places and have the same menus, this new one
actually has the credentials to pay a bill. No where in the system does it ever say how to do this, I had to drive up to the AT&T store and have a person explain it to me. What a shitty system.

NPR just released its top 100 sci-fi and fantasy novels as chosen by their listeners. I'm afraid I've
only read 10 on them. Sigh, and I call myself a geek!

Thankfully, Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot. Mitt Romney, a man who wears magic underwear to hide his shame from God, recently said that
corporations are people. As one Right, my brother is a corporation. When a corporation goes bankrupt, we hold a funeral. It takes a male and female
corporation to make a new corporation. Corporations can get their feelings hurt and fall in love and have first kisses. Actually, corporations are treated like people so that they can donate huge amounts of money
to political candidates so that the corporations with the most money get to push their political views on actually people who don't have the spending power of a huge corporation.

Much like the Boy Scouts, the Brownies will not let children join their ranks, and will in fact kick them out, if they don't pledge a belief and
devotion to a higher power. Just a quick question, what seven-year-old
truly understands what it means to have a belief in a higher power?

Patents are stupid.

Feeling: Annoyed

2011/08/11

Apple was just granted 20 new patents for some amazing new inventions like:
A touch screen on a phone (never seen that before). An interface for checking voicemail (a monumental invention). A minitower computer (1991 called, they want their technology back). Booting a computer
(seriously), displaying images and movies (the patent uses big words, but this is essentially what it means), reading meta data (MP3 programs have been doing this for over a decade), and my personal favorite, a
circuit board (invented before Steve Jobs was born). Practically everything in their list is just an existing technology with a -very- small tweak, or note even an invention at all. These don't deserve to be
patented.

Ken Ham's "Ark Park", a privately owned Young-Earth Creationist Christian theme park, is about to have even more of it
paid for by taxpayers. Using governmental money to promote a religious institution clearly violates the first amendment,
but this is Kentucky, and they have a hard time with readin' n' such.

AT&T is a terrible company with awful customer service. I've been trying to pay my DSL bill online for over a week now, and I keep getting the run around. Their web site has you log in with your user name and
password. But they don't let you simply pick your own user name, you have to enroll in their special AT&T email service. This means all of the information AT&T sends to you goes to that account (i.e., the account
you never check because you already have more email accounts than you know what to do with). So, I log in and go to the billing page, and of course, it tells me that my log in can't support bill paying unless I
log in with my special DSL account, which , as far as I know, I don't have. I call the local AT&T building, but the number doesn't go to the building, it goes to an automated service. It asks for a phone number,
but I have DSL, not a phone number. After pounding numbers for five minutes, the automated service admits defeat and sends me to a human. The human tells me my phone number is actually my account number, which
is five digits too long, and not formatted to look like a phone number. Well, now that I'm connected to a person, surely I can pay my bill, right? Nope, they charge you $5 for having a human pay your bill. This
doesn't matter much because my bill is twice as much as they said it would be, and I'm talking to someone who can only handle New York accounts. The only reason I haven't cancelled my AT&T account is because my
apartment complex signed a contract with AT&T, and I have no choice. However, I do have the ability to ditch my AT&T cell phone, and I will do that.

I've been playing a lot of Minecraft lately. The sandbox aspect of the game is really fun, it's like having 2x2 foot titanium Legos to play with. However, the game aspect is pretty dull. Most of the monsters
are easy to deal with, but the creepers are really annoying. I find the game is more fun just to play in passive mode. I also am annoyed with having to constantly craft tools over and over again. It probably
wouldn't be so bad if they lasted a little longer. After looking at the Wikis, I'm surprised at how little there is to the game. You can see everything the game has to offer after only a few hours of playing.
Contrast that with Terraria, which I've played for over 50 hours, and I'm still missing a lot.

Former judge Mark Ciavarella Jr., who had been sentencing young first-time offenders to harsh sentences in juvenile jails and receiving kickbacks from said juvenile jails, has just been
sentenced to 28 years. The former judge apologized to the children and teens he sent to jail, but claimed that he
never incarcerated children for money, even though he accepted $1 million from a company that runs the juvenile jails. That's one corrupt judge behind bars, let's get the rest of them.

I really don't like creepers in Minecraft.

Feeling: Okay

2011/08/10

If you start a cult and then coerce two underage girls to have sex with you, you can expect life in prison just like
Warren Jeffs.

If you get your science information from Fox News, you're probably really stupid. Just recently, Fox News told its viewers that climate change isn't possible because it violates the
first law of thermodynamics which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Of course, climate change doesn't happen by magically creating energy,
it happens by trapping the energy from the sun in our atmosphere. Fox News... stupid! You so stupid!

Rick Perry's wonderful Prayer Rally, went on and wasted a huge amount of the Texas taxpayer's money. During the prayer many wonderful things were said, like public schools should allow prayer (they do), Jews
should convert to Christians (so much for our Judeo-Christian values), Jesus was anti-gay and anti-choice (in the bible, Jesus never says anything about homosexuality or abortion), and
much more!

The Catholic Church in Australia has finally decided to apologize to the 150,000 women they manipulated, pressured, or forced into
giving up their babies for adoption. Yes, an apology is certainly due for 30 years of strong-arming
impressionable young mothers, but it doesn't go far enough, not even remotely. The people who were in charge of these practices should be jailed.

When Christian apologists like William Lane Craig go into a debate, they are knowingly dishonest with their viewers. In particular, his Kalam Cosmological Argument for the existence of God is based on the
work of several scientists. However, when you ask those scientists about their work you find that they're all atheists, and that their work actually helps to disprove the existence of God. This has been brought
up to William Lane Craig numerous times, yet he continues to claim that these scientists help prove the existence of God. William Lane Craig is a liar.

Damn you Creepers!

Feeling: Sleepy

2011/08/08

Saw a live version of The Sound of Music last night which was pretty good. I still think that any place where people are expected to be quiet should not allow children or at least keep them in a sound-proof
room; along with annoying old ladies with loud cameras.

In Terraria, I defeated Skeletron, cleaned out most of the dungeon, and started mining Hellstone to get started on a molten set. I alos played Minecraft for the first time. I've had my house blown up by
creepers about six times, but I've finally got a decent home and fence built.

Not sure what Fox News is trying to say here. They have a report on President Obama's 50th birthday party saying that it, "Didn't create jobs." I'm pretty sure my 50th birthday party won't create any jobs
either, what's your point?

Kurt Vonnegut's famous "Slaughterhouse-Five" and Sarah Ockler's "Twenty Boy Summer" have been banned from Republic High School
in Missouri, the Willfully-Ignorant State. The reason,
according the the schoolboard, is because these books teach, "principles contrary to the Bible." This, of course, is a violation of the first amendment of the US Constitution. Furthermore, the challenge was
originally brought forth by Wesley Scroggins who homeschools his children anyway, so they're in no danger of ever reading a book that may enlighten them (until they turn 18 and get a severely painful culture
shock). But it was also a major backfire since the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library has decided to give away 150 free copies of
Slaughterhouse-Five to any Republic High School student.

San Francisco, CA is making headway in forcing pregnancy centers to be upfront about their abortion
policies. I guess the natives just got tired of every Christian pregnancy center trying as hard as they can to sound like a clinic that offers abortion, only to later manipulate a woman into having the child
and then providing them with absolutely no financial support.

A study was recently released which measured two very important metrics in the healthcare industry of 19 developed nations. The first measurement was how much money is put into healthcare by the country, and
the USA is #1! The second measurement is how efficiently each country converts money into saving lives, and the USA is
#17! Ouch.

Getting annoyed with PHP.

Feeling: Happy

2011/08/05

More child sexual assault from Christians, this time from the LDS church. Warren Jeffs used his power as a church leader to marry and have sex with several women and girls, including a 15-year-old, and a
12-year-old.

Susan Jacoby wrote an essay speaking
out against the Americans Atheists lawsuit regarding the gigantic metal cross being added to the 9/11 Museum. While the essay was one-sided and full of ad
hominems, it did raise one important point. Her argument is that adding a symbol of Christianity to a government museum doesn't violate the Establishment Clause of the first amendment to the US Constitution
because it isn't an endorsement of religion. She writes that the museum is a collection of the ways people dealt with the attack, and the cross was simply one of those ways. To her, this is a matter of history,
and just like you wouldn't leave out the fact that George Bush was a Christian from the history books, you also shouldn't leave this out of the museum. While I agree with her that the cross is part of history
because it demonstrates how people handled their loss, I disagree with her claim that it doesn't endorse religion, and here's why. Approximately 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks. Each person had their own
religious and philosophical beliefs, and you can bet that their family and friends constructed monuments based on their religions. In fact, considering how many lives this attack affected, there are probably
thousands of religious monuments, far too many for the museum to hold. What this means is that many religious monuments aren't going to fit in the museum, so the museum (that is the Federal government) is going
to have to decide which ones are important enough to get in. Doesn't that mean the government is endorsing one religion over another? And how will they decide which religious monuments are important enough to get
in? Will it be based on popularity? Only the top five religions get in? Isn't that an endorsement of a religion over another? And look at the size of that cross, it's huge! Will all the other monuments be allowed
to be that big? Doesn't allowing one huge monument to be displayed near a bunch of tiny monuments endorse one religion over another?

blink-182 created their latest music video by going to all of the YouTube accounts that had uploaded their music videos illegally, and giving them a
taste of their own medicine. They took clips from all of the videos the thieves made and made a video from all of their personal uploads. Pretty clever.

The Christian Heaven is becoming less of a reality, and more of a myth to Dutch clergy men.

Cosmos to get a sequel to be hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yes please.

Christopher Jarvis was the Catholic Church's official Chief of child protection. He was in charge of making sure that those randy priests kept it in their robes. I say "was" because Christopher Jarvis was
just fired and arrested for downloading, distributing, and making child pornography and having over 4,000 images of child pornography
on his computer.

My Firefox recently got hijacked with Microsoft's Bing search engine, and I'm not really sure how I got this. At first I thought it was one of those "Yes, I want to install this bullshit software!" options
hidden in the installation process of free software. Developers put these in their installers because they get a little money each time they're able to sneak it onto your computer--see my list of
known culprits. While this is very dishonest, it isn't illegal (not yet anyway), so they continue to get away with it.
However, as I continued searching I found that it wasn't something I did, but it was in fact Firefox itself that was hijacking my search results! Every time I closed and opened Firefox, I got stuck with the
Bing search, even after deleting it! However, after removing the Test Pilot addons that they give beta testers, everything is fine again. Shame on you Mozilla. This ordeal has really made me consider a permanent
switch to Chrome.

Republican Representative Doug Lamborn apologizes after comparing President Obama to a "tar baby".

If you like choose your own adventure games, you'll probably like Age of Fable.

The cops of Suffolk County, NY arrested a photographer for "Obstruction of Governmental Administration" even though the cameraman was further away from the crime scene than other
gawking pedestrians. All charges have since been dropped, but the cops are still bullies.

Springboro, OH school board member Kelly Kohls, elected as part of the Tea Party on a platform of fiscal responsibility, is trying to get Creationism taught in
Ohio's public schools. Remember when the school board of Dover, PN added Creationism to their
school board, they lost a cool million dollars. I hope Springboro has deep pockets, because Kelly Kohls is about to piss
away their money. But what can you expect from a fiscally responsible person who declared
bankruptcy and had their $450,000 house foreclosed?

Hungry!

Feeling: Happy

2011/08/02

In Terraria, I've created a nice obsidian generator, made a skull, created a lava bath beneath my home, flattened out a good portion of the map, and mined out another meteor.

Starting next August, insurance providers will be forced to provide all FDA approved birth control methods
without any co-pay! It's about damn time!

Kansas is an embarassment to the United States. In 2005 they tried to teach Creationism in public schools. In 2011 they tried to eliminate all of their abortion clinics. Finally, the federal government stepped
in and told them that they have to go back to funding Planned Parenthood This is the second time a federal court
has had to come in and stop Kansas in their attempt to remove all abortion providers.

On Lawrence Leung's show Unbelievable, he tackles psychic phenomenon: Part 1 - Part 2.

A pet owner in Texas has to face animal abuse charges after saying he didn't have to take his sick dog to the vet because it was against his
Christian religion.

PHP doesn't have a DELETE command, they use UNIX's UNLINK command for deleting a file. They even have a page for DELETE in their online manual that only exists as a
redirect to UNLINK. Chances are, if you have to redirect people from a command that makes sense to a command that doesn't make sense, you're naming
convention isn't very clear.

At a Catholic school in Australia, the chaplain and principle had been raping boys for nearly 20 years, and investigators believe that at least 26 of those boys had killed themselves because of it. The police
want to do a full-scale investigation, but Bishop Connors doesn't think it's necessary. He says, and I'm quoting, "In the past a lot of ignorance was there on the part of lots of people. Parents didn't
understand, sometimes bishops didn't understand. We have no excuse now." To him, raping little boys was a gray area that they didn't understand, but
now they know better? What. The. Fuck!?

Golly, those darn Communists are trying to destroy the American way of life by saving trees and allowing gay people the right to marry!

The Eater of Worlds has been defeated.

Feeling: Happy

2011/08/01

I now have a full set of meteorite armor, the nightmare pickaxe, the meteor hamaxe, the space gun, flippers, and a vilethorn. I've defeated the Eater of Worlds, and I'm currently working on mining meteors 3
and 4. In non-gaming news, Emily and I went to a tea party on Saturday, and we hosted a dinner party on Sunday.

Despite what Fox News and oil companies are saying, global climate change is still
a real thing, and the new NASA data doesn't deny it, but confirms it.

The US House of Representatives have passed a bill that would force all ISPs to record basically all your personal information for a full year. The bill is called the
Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act, but of course, since this is a Republican bill,
it has almost nothing to do with protecting children from Internet pornography. Basically, what the bill actually does, is allow any police group access your entire Internet history for any reason. Every web page
you hit, every word you searched for, it all becomes public to the police. If you did a Google search for an embarrassing medical problem, and got a traffic ticket 11 months later, you can be sure that your local
police officer knows about it.

A CBS News show edited a 4-year-old's statement from wanting to be a cop, to sounding like he wanted to be a gang banger.

Compassionate Christians post on Fox News' Facebook page. The Fox News censors took them down as
fast as possible, but not quick enough to prevent screen captures.

Aron Ra has a nice response to governor Rick Perry's insultingly stupid prayer day. Other politicians have a more progressive, less breaking the first
amendment approach to politics. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg reminds the people of New York that atheists are people, and they have every right to sue over
religious discrimination.